There are far too many Information Systems (IS) projects which end in failure.
It is widely recognised that the primary reasons for this are essentially human and
organisational and rarely technical. Although it is found that the vast majority of IT
specialists consider human and organisational issues to be of equal if not of greater
importance than technical issues, in practice they are still focusing on technical
aspects at the expense of human and organisational issues in Information Systems
Development (ISD) and implementation. Despite the awareness of the importance of
human and organisational issues in ISD, little is known about how these issues can
actually be addressed. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating empirically
how, when and by tinhorn a set of 14 specific organisational issues are treated in
practice, and explores whether the treatment of this set of issues is dependent upon the
employment of specific Systems Development Methods (SDM) or the successful
adoption of organisationally oriented best practice factors.
In excess of 2,250 questionnaires were posted to IS/IT directors in different
British organisations which had over 250 employees, and 344 valid responses were
received. This mail survey was followed by a series of focus groups interviewees with
IT practitioners. It was envisaged that the integration of the two strategies would
provide a very effective mechanism for combining the complementary advantages of
the qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The interviews provided a
richer picture of the research statistical results and explored their meaning and
implications.
This research presents empirical evidence that the level of organisational
issues consideration, the tinting of treatment, and the person/people responsible for
the treatment during ISD significantly influence the overall level of systems' success.
The findings also show that there is a significant correlation between the adoption of
best practice factors and the overall success of IS and the treatment of organisational
issues. There is, however, no significant relationship between the use of systems
development methods and the overall success of IS or the treatment of organisational
issues. These findings suggest that it is not the choice of a specific systems method that
ensures the consideration of a wide range of organisational issues, but the successful
adoption of the organisationally oriented best practices approaches.

Description:

A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.